Dr Falco Pfalzgraf organised and led the International Conference “Attitudes towards gender-inclusive language. A multinational perspective”
Directly contributing were 31 presenters, residing in 14 countries, working on 15 languages - and well beyond. In addition, there were another 51 attendees from 21 countries. The total number of 82 participants shows that the interest in this subject area is considerable.
Gender-neutral and gender-inclusive language is currently being discussed in the public sphere, and views on the subject have increasingly been voiced by individuals as well as organisations. These include state institutions, private associations, subject specialists such as linguists, and private individuals / laypeople. Views of and attitudes towards gender-neutral language cover a broad spectrum between extreme ends, and even subject specialists hold conflicting views.
Some academic research on attitudes towards gender-neutral language has been conducted and published. However, a multinational/multilingual, comparative perspective is still missing. To address this shortcoming, this international conference will bring together researchers studying attitudes towards gender-neutral language in different languages and countries.
Examples of questions which will be addressed and discussed are: How are attitudes towards gender-neutral language voiced in different countries and languages? What groups or individuals engage in the debate, and what are their views and attitudes? What are the prevailing discourses? Are there clashes between proponents of different varieties of gender-fair language?
The international conference Attitudes towards gender-inclusive language. A multinational perspective was held online on Thursday 8th and Friday 9th September 2022.
The number of submitted proposals was unforeseeable: We received proposals from well over 80 researchers, based in 25 countries. We accepted the top 40% of all proposals, which led to the extension of the conference to a second day.
33 papers were presented by 46 speakers based in 17 countries: Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Pakistan, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, USA.
In total, 192 participants registered for the conference. They were based in 36 countries: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Congo (DR), Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malawi, Malaysia, Malta, Morocco , Netherlands, New Zealand, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, Ukraine, USA
See more about Dr Falco Pfalzgraf's work here.